Can you get a ticket for driving a loud car?

Unfortunately, YES. In today’s nanny state, it is certainly possible to get a ticket for the sounds your car makes. We actually see this a lot. The severity of the tickets can range from an annoying no-points civil ticket, to very serious criminal charges that can result in license suspensions.

We’ll discuss a couple scenarios we commonly see resulting in tickets. Then we’ll discuss a couple problematic locations for these kinds of tickets.

Loud exhaust tickets

These fall into the annoying but minor ticket category. These tickets are focused solely on the sound of a car, not any driving behavior. Arizona has a state law that requires mufflers that “prevent excessive or unusual noise.” Obviously pretty arbitrary – what exactly does excessive or unusual noise mean? In real life, it means a cop doesn’t like how it sounds.

There are also lots of municipal noise ordinances. For example, Carefree, AZ, prohibits noise above 80 decibels. This ordinance is targeted towards motorcyclists. It is a civil violation with a fine. Annoying, certainly. But it’s not a moving violation, and being a municipal ordinance and not a state law, it doesn’t get reported to MVD or your insurance.

Loud car when accelerating

Here’s where things get problematic. Cops have a hard time with cars that are loud when accelerating. Inevitably, if a cop hears a car that is accelerating, and the car is perceived as loud, the cop will automatically believe that the driver is racing or engaging in an exhibition of speed. We see it all the time.

A cop hears a car accelerate. It could be a normal acceleration, but if the exhaust is loud, the cop is going to chase down that car and pull them over. The driver of the car will understandably be confused. Later, after the driver has hired us, we get the police report and read it in disbelief. Somehow, the cop’s report bears no resemblance to reality.

The police report reads like an excerpt from a movie script about a car chase. The cops always add in language about squealing tires, tire smoke and fishtailing of the rear of the car. It’s amusing to read cops describe fishtailing when the defendant’s car was front wheel drive. For good measure, the cops will usually add in something about how the driver almost crashed into and killed a crowd of pedestrians too.

We know cops just make stuff up because sometimes our clients have dash camera videos that show exactly what actually happened. Conveniently, the cops never have video of what they “saw”. We’re just supposed to take their word for it.

Tire Chirps And Squeals

Just like loud exhausts, cops think any noise coming from a tire means reckless driving or an exhibition of speed. Never mind that I heard a city bus’s tires squeal outside court the other day as it drove around a corner. You know the sound, like when you’re driving around a corner in a parking garage and your tires make a squealing sound, even though you’re going like 5 mph.

So when a driver is obeying every traffic law, but they driver over the light rail tracks and their tires make a noise, a cop will issue a ticket. When a driver is driving on asphalt that transitions to brick and their tire makes a noise, you guessed it, ticket.

Please Oh Please Don’t Drive In Old Town Scottsdale Or On Mill Ave At Night.

These two places are crawling with bicycle cops who are aggressive ticket writers. The vast majority of the most B.S. reckless driving and exhibition of speed tickets we see come from these two areas. There are a couple problems with bicycle cops.

One, they are on bicycles. Every car sound a bicycle cop hear feels really loud to them. Normal car sounds that a person in a car wouldn’t even notice sound loud to cops standing on the sidewalk.

Two, bicycle cops travel in gangs. When one bicycle cop says you fishtailed down Mill Ave and almost killed a bunch of college coeds, all of the other bike cops nod in agreement, even if they didn’t see anything. When it comes to trial, 6 bicycle cops roll in and tell exactly the same story. Gotta stick together right? And of course, ALL of their body cameras somehow failed to capture anything.

Loud Car = Traffic Ticket

That’s the bottom line. I’ve never seen an electric car get an exhibition of speed ticket because you can’t hear them. If you drive a loud car, know that you are a target for law enforcement, especially in the Phoenix metro area. As an added bonus to a b.s. exhibition of speed ticket, your car will get impounded for 20 days too.